The brainchild of Mike Pickering, a former DJ at Manchester’s famous Hacienda nightclub, M People have managed a striking transformation from conception to execution. Setting unabashed 70s-style disco within current dance-music technology, they deliver the link missing from virtually all contemporary club fare: real songs. Vocalist Heather Small, a brassy, gospel-tinged diva, possesses the pipes needed to contend with the group’s thunderous, pumping beat, but she can also quiver whisperingly and inventively craft subtle melodic variations. M People’s recordings–last year’s terrific Elegant Slumming compilation and the brand-new Bizarre Fruit (both on Epic)–are marked by spare but high-tech production, groove-oriented percussion swaddled in a lush horn section, sympathetic strings, and spirited backing vocals. Pickering and Paul Heard, the other main M person, write the songs and program the computers, never letting the technological side of the M People equation get in the way of the tunes. They’ve scored nine top-ten hits in England, and “Open Your Heart” is currently number one on the Billboard dance charts. As the incongruously bluesy acoustic slide guitar solo on “Drive Time”–a clever little road-trip love song (“White line high in my love express”)–suggests, M People aren’t just another disco-diva studio production. They’re even traveling with a ten-piece band. Saturday, 10 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage; 929-5959 or 559-1212.
